..........................imagine being one of the guys that has to sift through the thousands of horrible submissions by some 16year old toy who's mom told him about this...why doesn't this rich fuck hire someone to track down an artist who has the style they are looking for instead of having a million emails looked at by 15 interns who have a degree in contemporary art with a minor in art history and know nothing about graffiti except "that BANKSY guy is cool". Here's the link to the full page. I do honestly hope someone who knows what their doing and is deserving gets this job and gets paid a grip
Wheat paste, Bombing, Gallery art, X-treme BBQin'...this dude does it all and hes been all over. As an artist he is extremely well rounded and has a unique style that stays sharp and clean while being funky and it's become one of my favorites. Check him out and watch the time-lapse video at the bottom.. click any photo to enlarge it
Luke Wessman is an amazing tattooer originally from Oceanside,ca and now working at Wooster street social club (NY INK). He has been talking for awhile now online about how he is putting together an all roses line art book. When i first heard this idea i was excited for acouple reasons, one, because if you have seen any of my tattoos you know roses are my favorite thing to do, and two, because i love how many different ways there are to do them and each person has their own little twist on it. I even tend to find myself ,when i first discover a tattooers work that's new to me, searching out how they do roses before anything else, for some reason it gives me a better idea of their personality i feel. Recently Luke posted on his blog that his book will be not only his roses but it will have pages from a list of heavy hitters such as Ross Nagle,Tommy Montoya, Ragino, Bj Bets, Kaname, Lindsey Charmichael, Morgwn Pennypacker, Tim Mcalary, Mikey Slater, Franco Vescovi, Adam Hathorn, Kiku, Chops, Tattoo Forrest, Chris Stuart, Matt Beckerich, Eddy Ospina, Maneko, Scott Bakoss, Guy Waisman, Megan Massacre, Tim hendricks, Mike Wilson, Freddy Corbin, and Chris Garver. With a line up like that this book is going to be a must have for sure. The book is supposed to come out soon and i for one will definitely be getting a copy. To read more about the book and order your own copy go to Luke's web page HERE
.jpg)
remember to check Luke's site regularly for updates on the book,other products, and new tattoos and artwork. click here Luke Wessman's page . and follow him on instagram @LUKEWESSMAN
UTAH and ETHER have been painting together on the east coast for a long time and its widely known they were a couple. Together they hit tons of freights, clean trains and city spots for years till they both went down and got locked up some years back. it was all over the news out in new york, the full story is HERE. They were called the graffiti bonnie and Clyde.After doing their time they seem to have resurfaced out in Europe and Asia and they are killing it for sure. I for one am glad to see it because these two are some of my favorite writers. Watch this video and you can see just how little a fuck people in other countries give about graffiti.. its about 5 minutes of them just doing street spot after street spot right in front of people. That shit gets me pumped. If you want to see more just search their names on google or flickr or anywhere and there is endless pics of new graffiti from them..... i cant get enough...
Before i moved to the northwest in 2009 i lived in a large,semi-rundown, party pad which we named "the compound", due to the massive size of the property and the amount of people that where there on the regular. This place was set up perfect to be a secluded party pad for guys like us. At the time the people who lived there full time were Johnny Gorman (tattooer/ only guy on the lease), Dose (tattooer,local celebrity/scumbag) , Me (out of work artist/professional alcoholic, couch surfer/ semi-pro coke head), and Mouse (skater/warehouse worker/ artist-stencil junkie). This pad was insane to say the least and because of the way the land was set up in to our neighbors, we could party all night with over 100 people and the cops literally never came ONCE. Most of us would spend our days recuperating from the night before while Johnny and mouse would go to their jobs. Once johnny got home we quickly set up friends and girls to come over for the nights party and that's the cycle we lived in for about a year. During this time the homie/roommate MOUSE would quickly get home from work everyday and cut stencils in his room for hours while playing "dont talk to me" by G.G. Allen on repeat the entire time (no exaggeration), once he was done cutting he would go out back and line up about 50 pieces of grip and he would start spray painting the stencils on the grip one by one. since i had been into graffiti and anything involving spray paint since i was a little kid i would often ask mouse if he wanted me to help him spray all those grip, he always refused any help. We would go out back every day or so to see the newest stencils he had cut. The stencils were always clean and the artwork was really good but the best part are his concepts. He comes up with designs that usually take some sort of iconic person,character,or product from our everyday life and flips them on their head in a Witty and skillful way that lets him use his art to not only entertain you but get a message across at the same time. Sometimes its purely funny and sometimes his stuff has alot of commentary behind it, but either way people started eating it up right away. I eventually moved out of state for the next 3 years and while i was gone Mouse was busy. Every time i opened a skate magazine i would see at least one or two skaters rocking Mouse grip on their boards. It eventually got to the point before i moved back that it seemed like it was harder to find someone in the magazines NOT skating on his grip. i saw him briefly when i got back and he said pretty casually that he was still making his grip tape and painting canvases and i assumed he was doing good but it wasn't untill i went to the mall and was in a very corporate clothing/skate shop and saw "MOUSE GRIP" for sale behind the counter. i couldn't believe it. i called him right there and he explained he had gotten a distribution deal thats putting his grip tape in shops all over the country and letting him be able to paint and do grip full time. i couldn't be more proud of this dude for continuing to do what he loves to do and putting in the constant effort and dedication needed to make it
In case you missed it. this last Saturday, the 16th was the "Parachute factory" show which was put on by Yeller Studio, Sezio and Mindgruve. This art show was held in a shut down 2 story factory in downtown san diego that used to manufacture parachutes for soldiers during WWII. And with the end of the war also came the end of the factory. We arnt sure whats been going on in there since its close , but apparently this building is going to be the new office headquarters for Mindgruve.Before the factory gets remodeled the people at Mindgruve decided to let some of SD's most talented artists to paint the walls inside and put on a massive artshow. Now i knew the show was going to be big, by Saturday almost everyone i ran into was talking about it, however i had no idea just how many people would show up and how big the inside of this place actually was. We showed up acouple hours after the show started to find a line of people that was about an entire city block long and the venue completely packed to the brim.Thanks to some characters painted across the street by "SURGE", the people outside at least had some nice art to look at to pass the time.I\ However i wasnt trying to sit and check it out just yet ,so after quickly pulling some strings we were let in (thanks NEKO). After walking up a tight staircase that led up to the factory we started navigating around the massive maze of art that was this place. The first floor had countless rooms that each had their own theme,some by graffiti artists, some by local wheatpasters(what you might call "street artists") and some had crazy video/audio installations.The second floor was upstairs and had a few huge rooms with a different artist on each large wall. There was a DJ and a sort of light show that turned the biggest room,which overlooked the street downstairs into a "club" type environment with people dancing while the graffiti writers in attendance were given free reign to write on any open spot left because, after all, the place was about to be ripped apart anyways in a few days. By the end of the night the place was totally bombed out with tags from about 100 different writers on everything and i couldn't help being bummed at the thought that this amazing artwork was going to be gone soon. We snapped some more quick shots while being kicked out and found everyone outside in the parking lot making plans for the rest of the night. One by one the car/taxi loads of people left to different bars and after parties in the area,and just like that the block was back to normal and for us the night was over
......All in all the night seemed to be a complete success. everyone seemed to have a alot of fun, the cops didn't show up, and not a single fight or anything like it broke out. Thanks to Chad Robley, Yeller studio, Sezio and Mindgruve for hooking up the venue and making this awesome show happen.I hope more stuff like this will happen in the future and if it does i will be sure to keep you posted on this blog. stay tuned, and if you have any info or know about any good art shows coming up that you want to see on here then email me at dudeoner@yahoo.com -D
.jpg)
.jpg)
